ABSTRACT
Clinical psychologists, who work in the ®eld of child protection, are called on to make judgements about children, and also the people who care for them. Therefore, in order that clinical psychology expert witnesses are enabled to support a critical justice agenda in child protection it is necessary to consider the rights, responsibilities and needs of adults, as well as children, within this context. A critical justice agenda is one which is concerned with the ongoing development of theoretically and empirically robust child protection practices that are based on progressive principles of empowerment and collaboration. Part of this process involves identifying and addressing potential commonalties between abused children and abused adults. Speci®cally, as the World Health Organization WHO (2006b) has pointed out, the gender dimension of sexual and physical violence must be addressed if both international and domestic laws, policies and guidance are to succeed in supporting abused children and adults. As feminists have long argued, women and girls are particularly vulnerable to abuse within the home (see Chapter 4; WHO 2007a). The family system represents a prime site in which abusers can justify, enable and conceal abuse, and both girls and women may be subject to sexual exploitation and violent domination by their relatives. Thus, it is unsurprising that sometimes the sexual abuse of children coincides with the domestic abuse of adults, or that like child sexual abuse, the domestic abuse of adults is relatively common.
